An Errant Witch

by E M Graham

  ‘Try it, Sandy,’ Fergie urged. She hovered over the pen, excited.

  He reached out a tentative hand and patted the air around the pen, about an inch away. ‘I think you did it,’ he said as the pen rolled out of his reach, rolling over the uneven surface of the Refectory table. ‘Yes, you did!’

  He cut off my whoop of excitement and pride.

  ‘Now you’ve got to do it using the wand,’ he objected.

  ‘I did, I had the wand in my hand the whole time.’

  He shook his head. ‘Pointing it is not the same as using your medium.’ Sandy crossed his arms and looked up at me.

  I threw down the wand in frustration. ‘What difference does it make?’

  ‘You’ve got to be able to use your medium,’ he stated, his tone matter-of-fact and brooking no argument.

  ‘But why? I can do just as well with just my mind. I don’t need the wand.’

  ‘I think,’ Fergie began, and she bit her lip and looked at Sandy. ‘I think she doesn’t understand why we use the mediums. Maybe no one has ever explained it to her.’

  ‘Oh,’ Sandy said, then gave a small smile as he turned to me. ‘Sorry about that, such a basic concept, I didn’t even think about it.’

  I waited, not giving a smile in return. This had better be good.

  ‘The mediums, you see,’ he started. ‘The mediums are used to store energy.’

  ‘Like a battery,’ Fergie suggested.

  ‘Yes! Just like a self-charging battery in a car,’ he said. ‘The more you use it, the more energy gets stored in it. So right now...’

  He pointed at my wand. ‘There’s no energy in it, is there?’

  I shook my head. No, there was no power in it, it was no more than a simple, polished piece of wood with a charred end.

  ‘Rasmussen would have deactivated it before putting it away, ready for someone new,’ he said. ‘So it’s a blank slate, just waiting for you to rewrite it over with your magic prints.’

  ‘Like a computer program?’

  ‘Similar. And the more energy, power, magic that you direct through your medium, the more it will charge, which means you have to use less magic each time you use it.’

  ‘Till eventually, it becomes almost a part of you,’ Fergie added. ‘You’ll use it without even thinking.’

  ‘Try to feel an affinity with it,’ Sandy urged. ‘Get your mind into the wand, otherwise it won’t take.’

  I looked at the wood in my hands with disgust. It was a useless, dead stick as far as I was concerned, good for nothing better than kindling. But I tried. I tried to send my mind into it, feel the woodenness of it, trace the old paths of the sap veins from when it was alive and growing, yet nothing happened.

  ‘Try the spell again, now.’

  With not much hope but plenty of determination, I closed my eyes, concentrated, attempted to send my energy through the wand as I spoke the words, yet nothing was flowing this time. I let the stick clatter onto the table again.

  ‘It’s no good,’ I said. ‘I’m a failure. I can’t even use a stupid, first-grader wand.’

  ‘Maybe... maybe it’s broken?’ Sandy sounded doubtful, for all of us knew Rasmussen would never replace a broken wand onto his wall. ‘I mean, the scorching, earlier. Maybe that’s what did it.’

  I shrugged. It didn’t matter now anyway.

  ‘Oh,’ Fergie said. ‘Wait now.’

  We turned to look at her, surprised by the hope in her voice.

  ‘Maybe, just maybe, you already have a medium, and that’s why this isn’t working.’ Her eyes were shining as they looked up at me expectantly.

  I shook my head, hating to quench the hope she’d ignited in all three of us. ‘I don’t. I’ve never used a medium before.’

  She grabbed my arm and shook it. ‘The coin! That metal thing you have! That had a load of magic stored in it. Although...’

  The medallion. I stared at Fergie, hope firing anew. It wasn’t my magic, and Mom, well, she was a Normal with not an ounce of magic in her, but maybe. Just maybe.

  ‘Although what?’ Sandy demanded.

  ‘The magic is tainted,’ Fergie admitted with an apologetic look at me. ‘I don’t know how that will work.’

  ‘Why don’t you get it, and we’ll give it a try?’ Sandy asked, ready to ignore any doubts as to the coin’s viability.

  I nodded. ‘Yeah, okay. I’ll get it.’ I looked back at both of them. ‘But I can’t get hold of it tonight.’

  It was dark out already, I couldn’t go traipsing through the moors and over the hills to rescue the coin. I didn’t want to tell Sandy I’d hidden it by his precious broch; I had a feeling he wouldn’t look too kindly on that action.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I promised. I would go back to the broch tomorrow, retrieve the coin, and hopefully talk with my mother again.

  I HEADED to bed early that night, for I had a lot to think about and I couldn’t stand to listen to the constant sniping over tea and scones in the Common Room. Too much had happened already in such a short time.

  There were so many things I had to figure out and wrap my head around. The facts I knew, and those I strongly suspected to be true all flew around inside my head like a flock of starlings; whirling and individually screaming for attention so that I couldn’t concentrate on one thread without another quickly grabbing my focus.

  My mother was locked inside a stone tower on an island I just happened to be sent to – what were the odds of that?

  Very unlikely, I knew; there must be some meaning behind it all. Was it the Kin in action? It had to be, for they were the ones who suggested I come here, leaving me not much choice in the matter. Lose my magic completely, or come to Scarp; it was a no-brainer to any half-witch wanting to better herself.

  My mind went back to the late morning hike around the hills. Happening upon the broch had felt like a home-coming to me, it drew me through the gorse like a moth to the flame. How could this be explained except by the fact that I’d sensed my mother deep within its impenetrable walls?

  Yet something niggled me still, and I had to admit it to myself, and that was the question of how I could have heard Mom’s voice so clearly through the solid rock. There was no logical explanation for that; the answer could only lie in the very magic that infused the whole island, for surely this would help sound travel better especially when there was a close emotional connection between us? Perhaps the power of the coin had enabled the solidity of the stone to melt to allow the soundwaves to pass through, after all.

  Sandy had claimed that the power of the legendary Crystal Charm Stone within the broch had more to do with it all, but I still couldn’t quite believe in that story. In fact, I wasn’t satisfied any of these answers, but I brushed over it to deal with a much more important issue, which was the need to rescue her.

  He knew the secret way into the broch, although he’d denied it. Tomorrow, I would find her again, and he would help me. Somehow, I would make him help.

  As I was drifting off with this comfortable thought in my mind, I felt a niggling, almost a physical movement of something stirring in my brain, like a worm reawakened from hibernation in a spring shower.

  I sat bolt upright. I knew that feeling.

  ‘No,’ I whispered. ‘No, you’re not real.’

  A laugh echoed in my head. Willem.

  ‘Get out. Get out of my head.’

  Now, Dara, is that anyway to greet me? Aren’t you happy I found you?

  ‘You’re not real,’ I whispered into the blanket I was clutching to my face. ‘You’re nothing but an auditory illusion.’

  Is that what they are telling you, your precious Kin? I’ve been watching, you know. I’ve seen your struggle with the wand. What is this nonsense? You can aim higher than this, Dara.

  ‘Stop it stop it stop it, you’re not really here.’ I was chanting like a prayer.

  Oh, I’m real enough. You do know there is an easier way to reach your dreams?
You don’t need this torture, all this uncertainty. You don’t need to suffer this pain. Come with me, I’ll show you how real magic works.

  ‘I don’t want you here,’ I whispered again. ‘Go away.’

  The Kin have always been false to you, Dara. Remember that. I bid you adieu for now, dearest. Till tomorrow....

  He was gone. Despite the cold air in the room, I was sweating. I stilled my breathing, willing my heart to match the slower pace when a slight movement alerted me to Fergie’s presence in the bed across from me. I looked over to see her wide gray eyes reflected in the moonlight of our uncurtained window.

  ‘Alright, then?’ she asked uncertainly.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said as I turned over on my side, away from her. ‘Just a bad dream.’

  I hoped and prayed it was a bad dream, but I knew the difference. In my heart, I knew that Willem was here on the island, and inside my head, and I knew I hadn’t healed at all.

  Chapter 12

  USING MAGIC can really take the good out of you and yet even with all my exhaustion and jet lag, I couldn’t sleep. The more I dwelled on it, the more certain I became that the shepherd had in fact been Willem, despite Sandy’s disclaimer, even if none of it made logical sense. After all, Sandy told me the first evening that he’d had been on the island a couple of months; he’d volunteered for sheep duty having had experience on his family’s croft near Ness, at the northern end of Lewis and Harris. Sandy knew the shepherd.

  Unless... unless Willem had cast a Disillusion spell on himself, thereby posing as the hermit. But likewise, that didn’t add up because if I could see through it, then the wee Scotsman could too, for Sandy had more witch blood running in his veins than I did.

  It was a dilemma I had to solve, and I got my chance early the next morning after breakfast, for we had some time before our next session. The sun now shone weakly in the crisp morning air and I took a thermos of strong tea from the Refectory. I might need fortifications, after all, and I definitely needed caffeine to keep me alert.

  There were two things I had to accomplish that morning, yet I didn’t want to make myself late for Durand’s session again; I had to retrieve the medallion and talk with my mother again, but first I had to find that shepherd in order to prove to myself that it wasn’t Willem, that the sorcerer hadn’t somehow followed me to Scarp. I needed to put my mind at rest before I did anything else.

  I avoided Fergie and Sandy, and I was pretty sure no one saw me as I slipped out the side door, making my way along the base of the castle walls, staying out of sight of the windows until I could break cover and dash for the shelter of a cottage ruin, one with just the stone walls standing. These would hide me till I turned the corner at the bottom of the hill.

  Once clear of the castle, I breathed deeply of the moist clear air, tinged with heather and rotting vegetation. It was a good, honest smell, and the sun even warmed me as I followed the path upwards. I wasn’t sure of what exactly I was looking for, but I kept an eye out for a shepherd’s hut or some such habitation. Sandy had said he lived somewhere up in the hills. It couldn’t be too far away, surely.

  After a half an hour of wandering along rabbit trails in the gorse, I’d had no luck; there were no signs of people or civilization on this face of the mountain. It was as good a time as any to have a spot of tea. I settled near a sparkly brook which gushed out of the rock and let the sun’s low rays warm my face. I was just after finishing the last of my tea, my face tipped up to catch the dregs from the cup when out of the corner of my eye I saw what I’d been looking for.

  The hut was just down the hill to my right, and I might have noticed it before this if I’d not been looking for a rectangular wooden structure. The doorway caught my eye first, a few planks of weathered, unpainted wood the same colour as the rock walls surrounding them, but with a roof made from turf with grass and ancient sticks of heather growing from it, there was even a blueberry bush. The small circular building was almost indistinguishable from the moors and rocks surrounding it.

  Even as I stared at it, the door opened slowly, and out stepped the very person I was looking for. He stooped to pass through the portal even though he was much the same height as myself. And like me, he had a slight build. As he carefully shut the rough door behind him, I saw his small white fingers on the hasp, digits so pale and soft no self-respecting shepherd would lay claim to them. I knew that hand, and the memory of it caressing my cheek sent shivers down my spine.

  He looked up at me on my perch and let his hood fall away.

  ‘Dara,’ Willem said in his clipped Dutch accent and he smiled, baring his teeth. He had the gall to pretend to be pleasantly surprised. ‘You found me.’

  ‘YOU.’

  It really was him. My mind buzzed with questions – how did he get here? Why was he here? What were his intentions? They could not be good.

  ‘I see you are admiring my new abode,’ he said, looking fondly over the hobbit house as if this was a chance meeting on a street corner. ’My bothy, I believe the Scots call it. A wee bit more comfortable than the steam boat, if not as warm as my bunk next to the boiler room. Would you care to see inside? Perhaps have a warm drink, I remember you are partial to hot chocolate. ’

  The bastard. That was the drink he’d given to Brin to send him into a grief spin. He had to remind me of my part in that affair?

  ‘What did you do to the shepherd?’

  He looked back at me with a quizzical air.

  ‘How did you fool Sandy?’ I pressed on. ‘You used some kind of spell on him, didn’t you?’

  Willem shook his head. ‘Oh, Dara, there’s so much you don’t know,’ he said, then he looked away to the hills across the water as if pondering a new idea.

  There was no doubt in my mind now that he had followed me here. Word of my whereabouts had spread quickly through the Kin world, after all; Fergie had heard the news on the ferry, just hours after the Inquiry had finished. His steamship must have taken him directly to Scotland, and he no doubt had connections all over the supernatural world.

  Besides that, there were all sorts of ways he could have tracked me down here to Scarp – the most likely being a tracking spell, a kind of magical GPS app on the coin. He’d had plenty of opportunity to apply one while he held it last month, before Brin wrested it from him on the harbor front, and with it, he would know where I was at any moment of time, anywhere in the world.

  And I’d led him right to this island, the holy island of the Kin.

  ‘Willem,’ I said as I forced down the bile in my throat. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘What do you think, my dearest?’

  Still the same slippery sorcerer, refusing to answer a question out right, meeting queries with questions of his own.

  “I think,’ I said carefully. ‘I think you’re planning mayhem against the Kin.’ It was a good guess, after all, considering who I was speaking to. He’d forced me to help him bring down the veil between Alt and real time, leaving my magic prints and smell all over the whole rotten deal, setting off the Inquiry which was the reason I was here on this island in the first place.

  He inclined his head to one side. ‘That’s an appealing idea,’ he said. ’Sounds quite delicious. Did you have anything specific in mind for us to do?

  ‘We make such a good team, you and I,’ he continued smoothly. ‘And perhaps we have unfinished business?’

  ‘I have no business with you,’ I said, gritting my teeth. Anger shot through me, hot and sudden and with no bounds and I found myself unaccountably protective of Scarp. I wanted him off this island and now before he could start the havoc he undoubtedly had in mind, for Willem did nothing without a reason and would not have come all this way without it benefitting himself. ‘Get out of here, get off this island, you have no right to be here.’

  He ignored me as if I was no more than a kitten spitting in fury.

  ‘My offer still stands, you know. What we discussed as we said our farewells
at the harbor.’ He looked back at me with a calculating air.

  He started it right then as we were facing off eye to eye, when my mind was full of emotion and my defences down; his gaze began to hypnotize as he sent out the first tendrils of icy fingers lightly touching my mind, seeking out the place he knew was inside of me. He had burned it into me, that tainted dark corner deep inside, and he was sure of his welcome there. While the thinking part of me blanched in disgust at his touch, still there was that tiny spot of addiction, still raw from last month that yearned for the heroin of his touch, that rose to meet his power and hungered for more.

  ‘As I said before,’ he continued in a soft voice I could barely hear over the cries of gulls and wind in the bushes. ‘We’re the same, you and I. We’re liars and cheats and shunned by the Kin. Fortunately, you fooled them and they didn’t bind your power. What a clever woman you are turning out to be.’

  He held me caught in his gaze, and that small despised corner of me grew, melting, spreading throughout my mind. ‘Come to me, Dara,’ he said. ‘Come, let me show you my world.’

  I felt my feet move towards him.

  ‘NO!’ I screamed the word somehow, whether in my mind or perhaps out loud, and I had the satisfaction of seeing him flinch. ‘No, I am not like you, I will not have any part of what you’re doing, Willem. I’ve been given a last chance to straighten out my life. I’m ordering you to leave this island right now, and if you don’t, I‘ll... I’ll throw you off a cliff myself!’

  And I meant it in my very bones. He was not going to screw up my life again. I leaned closer to him and hissed at him. ‘So help me God I will tell the Kin you’re here if you don’t go now.’

  But he merely laughed at me, a cold sound on that lonely hillside. His brown robe flapped a little in the wind.

  ‘What about the coin, Dara? Your precious medallion with the dirty magic on it? You’ll have to tell them about that,’ he said, a grin on his face. ‘You can’t bluff me, you know.’

  I stopped in my tracks, my fists tightly clenched. Yes, that coin Fergie had helped me smuggle on to the island. I dropped my hands and let go of my breath, deflating like a balloon. In order to tell the Kin about his presence on the island, I’d have to acknowledge that he followed me here, for without that bit of metal he could have had no idea where I was.